Easterbrook looked at him. And then he opened the door and walked out into the corridor.
He was almost at the elevator when it occurred to him that he would never see Captain Galloway unless he found out Captain Galloway’s room number.
There was a house telephone on a narrow table against the mirrored wall across from the bank of elevators. He picked it up and asked the operator for Captain Galloway’s room number.
“I will connect you, Sir.”
“I don’t want to be connected. I want to know what room he’s in.”
“I will connect you, Sir,” the operator persisted.
In the mirror, Easterbrook saw the elevator door behind him open. Staff Sergeant Thomas M. “Machine Gun” McCoy stepped off. He was wearing his dress blues, and the Medal of Honor was hanging down his chest.
He was closely followed by his gunnery sergeant escorts.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Sergeant McCoy said. “The ninety-day wonder is back. I thought we’d seen the last of you.”
Easterbrook tried to replace the handset in its cradle; he missed by two inches. He turned around.
“Fuck you, McCoy,” the Easterbunny said. “You’re really an asshole, you know that?”
Two strong hands grasped each of McCoy’s arms.
“Lieutenant, why don’t you get on the elevator,” one of the gunnery sergeants said.
“Because I have just decided to tell this asshole what I really think of him. You’re a fucking disgrace to The Marine Corps, McCoy.”
“You fucking little feather merchant!”
“I was there, McCoy, when you got that fucking medal. Don’t you call me a feather merchant!”
“What do you mean, you were there?”
“I mean I was on Bloody Ridge with the Raiders is what I mean, shit-for-brains. I know what happened. I saw what happened.”
“Shit, I didn’t know you was there.”
“I was there with Lieutenant Donaldson. You remember Lieutenant Donaldson, McCoy? Now, there was one hell of a Marine officer. And you know what he said to me the first time you ignored your orders and stood up with your fucking machine gun?”
“Lieutenant Donaldson got killed,” McCoy said.
“He said, ‘If the Japs don’t kill that sonofabitch, I will,’ is what he said.”
“Donaldson was wounded,” McCoy said, as if to himself.
“Yeah, he was bad wounded. But he saw you get up when you were supposed to stay where the fuck he told you to stay.”
“And then some sonofabitch with more balls than brains started to carry him down the hill, and the Japs killed him, too. I seen them go down. That’s when I stood up again.”
“I wasn’t hit, you asshole. The Lieutenant was too heavy for me to carry. I fell down with him on top of me and couldn’t get up. But I saw you, you sonofabitch, leave your hole and charge off like it was your own fucking war! Good Marines would have died if you hadn’t been so fucking lucky. If I had a weapon then, I’d have killed you myself.”
Lieutenant Easterbrook suddenly felt a little woozy. He turned around and supported himself on the telephone table. When he looked at the mirror, he saw McCoy being hustled away by the gunnies. And when he looked at his own reflection he saw that tears were running down his cheeks.
And then he knew he was going to be sick. He ran down the corridor to Dunn’s and Pickering’s room and hammered on the door until Pickering opened it. And then he ran into one of the bedrooms, and just made it to the toilet in time.
“I hope that the wages of sin caught up with him before Captain Galloway saw him shit-faced,” he heard Lieutenant Pickering say.
And then his stomach erupted again.
Chapter Sixteen
[ONE]
The John Charles Fremont Suite
The Foster Washingtonian Hotel
Seattle Washington
2145 Hours 13 November 1942
Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, sat at the writing desk in the sitting room. A bottle of scotch was beside him. Several sheets of ornately engraved stationery were before him.
He had started to write a long-overdue letter. When the knock at the door interrupted him, he’d gotten as far as:
Dear Dad,
I feel I have been shamelessly remiss in writing my favorite boy in the overseas service. I hope that you can understand that those of us on the home front are also making our sacrifices for the war effort, too. Would you believe that I’ve eaten chicken-in one form or another-for the piece de resistance eleven days in a row? And the shortages!…”